Sea Ice News – Volume 5 Number 1 – multiyear ice on the rise

From NSIDC: Arctic sea ice at fifth lowest annual maximum
Arctic sea ice reached its annual maximum extent on March 21, after a brief surge in extent mid-month. Overall the 2014 Arctic maximum was the fifth lowest in the 1978 to 2014 record. Antarctic sea ice reached its annual minimum on February 23, and was the fourth highest Antarctic minimum in the satellite record. While this continues a strong pattern of greater-than-average sea ice extent in Antarctica for the past two years, Antarctic sea ice remains more variable year-to-year than the Arctic.

Overview of conditions

Arctic sea ice extent for March 2014 averaged 14.80 million square kilometers (5.70 million square miles). This is 730,000 square kilometers (282,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average extent, and 330,000 square kilometers (127,000 square miles) above the record March monthly low, which happened in 2006. Extent remains slightly below average in the Barents Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk, but is at near-average levels elsewhere. Extent hovered around two standard deviations below the long-term average through February and early March. The middle of March by contrast saw a period of fairly rapid expansion, temporarily bringing extent to within about one standard deviation of the long-term average.

Conditions in context

In the Arctic, the maximum extent for the year is reached on average around March 9. However, the timing varies considerably from year to year. This winter the ice cover continued to expand until March 21, reaching 14.91 million square kilometers (5.76 million square miles), making it both the fifth lowest maximum and the fifth latest timing of the maximum since 1979. The latest timing of the maximum extent was on March 31, 2010 and the lowest maximum extent occurred in 2011 (14.63 million square kilometers or 5.65 million square miles).

The late-season surge in extent came as the Arctic Oscillation turned strongly positive the second week of March. This was associated with unusually low sea level pressure in the eastern Arctic and the northern North Atlantic. The pattern of surface winds helped to spread out the ice pack in the Barents Sea where the ice cover had been anomalously low all winter. Northeasterly winds also helped push the ice pack southwards in the Bering Sea, another site of persistently low extent earlier in the 2013 to 2014 Arctic winter. Air temperatures however remained unusually high throughout the Arctic during the second half of March, at 2 to 6 degrees Celsius (4 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1981 to 2010 average.

March 2014 compared to previous years

Average ice extent for March 2014 was the fifth lowest for the month in the satellite record. Through 2014, the linear rate of decline for March ice extent is 2.6% per decade relative to the 1981 to 2010 average.

An increase in multiyear ice

The extent of multiyear ice within the Arctic Ocean is distinctly greater than it was at the beginning of last winter. During the summer of 2013, a larger fraction of first-year ice survived compared to recent years. This ice has now become second-year ice. Additionally, the predominant recirculation of the multiyear ice pack within the Beaufort Gyre this winter and a reduced transport of multiyear ice through Fram Strait maintained the multiyear ice extent throughout the winter.

In Figure 4, Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) imagery reveals the distribution of multiyear ice compared to first year ice for March 28, 2013 (yellow line) and March 2, 2014 (blue line). The ASCAT sensor measures the radar–frequency reflection brightness of the sea ice at a few kilometers resolution. Sea ice radar reflectivity is sensitive to the roughness of the ice and the presence of saltwater droplets within newer ice (and, later in the season, the presence of surface melt). Thus older and more deformed multiyear ice appears white or light grey (more reflection), whereas younger, first-year ice looks dark grey and/or black.

Ice age tracking confirms large increase in multiyear ice

Satellite data on ice age reveal that multiyear ice within the Arctic basin increased from 2.25 to 3.17 million square kilometers (869,000 to 1,220,000 square miles) between the end of February in 2013 and 2014. This winter the multiyear ice makes up 43% of the icepack compared to only 30% in 2013. While this is a large increase, and may portend a more extensive September ice cover this year compared to last year, the fraction of the Arctic Ocean consisting of multiyear ice remains less than that at the beginning of the 2007 melt season (46%) when a large amount of the multiyear ice melted. The percentage of the Arctic Ocean consisting of ice at least five years or older remains at only 7%, half of what it was in February 2007. Moreover, a large area of the multiyear ice has drifted to the southern Beaufort Sea and East Siberian Sea (north of Alaska and the Lena River delta), where warm conditions are likely to exist later in the year.

Summer ice extent remains hard to predict

There is a growing need for reliable sea ice predictions. An effort to gather and summarize seasonal sea ice predictions made by researchers and prediction centers began in 2008. The project, known as the SEARCH Sea Ice Outlook, has collected more than 300 predictions of summer month ice extent. A new study published in Geophysical Research Letters by researchers at NSIDC, University of New Hampshire, and University of Washington reveal a large range in predictive skill. The study found that forecasts are quite accurate when sea ice conditions are close to the downward trend that has been observed in Arctic sea ice for the last 30 years. However, forecasts are not so accurate when sea ice conditions are unusually higher or lower compared to this trend. Results from the study also suggest that while ice conditions during the previous winter are an important predictor (such as the fraction of first-year versus multiyear ice), summer weather patterns also have a large impact on the amount of ice that will be left at the end of summer.

Why? Is it a growing number of people wanting to know out of idle curiosity or is there really a “need” for these predictions and if so, what is that need?

The problem is that in the Arctic the ice depends a lot on wind conditions and wind conditions can not be predicted a year in advance. Simply moving a high pressure system a couple of hundred miles can have a significant impact on how much ice is blown out of the arctic. I don’t believe we are ever going to get to that level of precision in forecasting that far in advance.

Anthony Watts see the movement of air at an altitude of 30 km. Again, a significant increase in temperature over the Arctic. This can cause cooling of the stratosphere in the equatorial regions. I wonder how this will affect the hurricane season and El Ninio this year.

Linear “trend” fits for such data are simplistic, disconnected from any reasonable mechanistic connection and frankly ridiculous. If you want to get a sense of what is happening just use a running average or a binomial filter. The way the March data jumps around for example a 2 – 3 year filter would be more revealing of behaviour over time.

Climate Scientist they say the sun does not effect temperatures on earth directly. I find that NOT to be true, TSI and Arctic temps above 80 N.
When there is fairly a normal circulation around the N pole region with no large storms or severe weather pattern moving across the polar region TSI spikes or dips fit like a glove with DMI temperature data above 80 N/
I do feel the same is happening around Antarctica but I just don’t have data to work with like the Arctic.

I shared my info with Judith Curry @curryja yesterday, I was not referring to her what I said in my above post, Climate Scientist they say the sun does not effect temperatures on earth directly.
Just want to make that clear..

This should grow through 2030, at least with the solar sunspot minimum. However, my readings of other Scientists who have studied the Atlantic Conveyor Belt put more emphasis on the Antarctica Polar Ice Cap. The South Pole is the feeder to the North Pole.

Since warming causes freezing in modern climate “science”, I guess that global warming and the magic molecule CO2 are behind this report of more old sea ice. If the planet gets much hotter we will all freeze to death!

I have promised myself to produce 3 metrics of Arctic sea ice, by writing some (or a lot) of code that maps the sea ice location to a 24 hour cycle (or variants of such as a moment in time) of the sun light intensity. For example an given area of ice will reflect more sunlight the further away it is from the pole if it is not in earths shadow all day.
The 3 metrics would cover the arctic circle, the arctic as defined by the red border in this map :
and the last metric would cover all northern hemisphere sea ice.
The first, arctic circle would be easiest. At the moment of the winter solstice the metric would be a value of 0 (zero) or I might reverse the metric so it would be 1 (one). It would change value from zero, or 1 as the sun started to return towards the north pole and sun light hits open water (no sea ice). The intensity of the sun will be a part of the metric (a simple angle from the perpendicular calculation, not actual joules, watts or whatever it is). The value would change throughout the day most of the time most likely. I could either calculate on a minute by minute change or larger time periods depending on accuracy desired. I don’t see it taking long for a modern computer to do the calculations.
My complications involve writing code to geo locate the pixels on sea ice maps to real world coordinates to carry out the necessary calculations. I also need to write the code to calculate the sun location at any given time and date. There may be other forms of ice data that I may need to write code to process.
The other 2 metrics will be more complicated and I need to think through if a value of 0 to 1 or some other numbers should be used.
I have a to-do list that has about 400 entries. First on the list is to write a smart phone app to help me with my to do list. I kid you not, I spent the fall and winter working on that to-do app and nearly have it up and running. It is very sophisticated and I don’t want to reveal details until I make it available for others probably much later this year.

eyeballing the sea ice extent map on WUWT it seems the ice at Svalbard is increasing along its eastern border and above Novaya Zemlya even at this late date although it may be melting further to the east.
It does melt rapidly from now on but I am hoping there will still be a late surge back to the average

What absolute rubbish.
Ice extent today is compared to averages measured since 1960 – roughly 55 years ( !!!!) for a planet that is more than a billion years old, and has experienced ice sheets that range in area from a very, very small percentage we see today to an extent many, many times greater than today AND where CO2 levels DURING some of the ice ages were HIGHER !!!!!!! than today.

Where there not reports about 100 to 200 years ago that sailing vessels were able to traverse Arctic regions that “normally” were ice bound? Does not the areal extent of the Arctic ice sheets change all the time?

Why don’t we just take the average temperature of say Omaha , Nebraska over the last 3 days, run some hi-fallutin statistical analysis on that data, and predict climate there 200 years hence ?

The results would be as reliable as the data provided in the sea ice article.
Unbelievable

Antarctic sea ice reached its annual minimum on February 23, and was the fourth highest Antarctic minimum in the satellite record. While this continues a strong pattern of greater-than-average sea ice extent in Antarctica for the past two years, Antarctic sea ice remains more variable year-to-year than the Arctic.

And that’s all they said about the Antarctic, despite paragraph upon paragraph and graph after graph about the Arctic. Heh. Well, at least they put it in the start of the article.

It seems peculiar to do linear regression on a known cyclic pattern. Unless the tilt of the earths axis changes, there will continue to have winter and summer seasons. It seems peculiar to assume that 35 years of satellite data is representative of long term. As Mr. Watts corrects, sea ice records aren’t “nail biting”. There needs to be more data to understand long term cycle, but all won’t live that long.

I would think that the long term historical records of when high latitude northern ports are ice free would be just as valid. I tember that there beenhave some posts here about some place in Alaska where a River is ice free.

The older ice accumulating in the western Arctic means that the Beaufort Gyre has resumed its normal operation of circulating the ice clockwise in the western arctic. This process started back up in February of last year (after several years of little circulation). This contributed to 2013’s recovery of the ice as well as the extent of multi-year thick ice in the western Arctic right now. Probably the highest since 2007.

The oldest, thickest ice forms on the north side of the Arctic Archipelago. This is the coldest place in the Arctic but it also has the least amount of sea ice drift and the ice can end up land-fast here for several years. 5 metre and 6 metre ice can be found here.

After that, there can be two possible outcomes for this thick multi-year ice.

Its get pushed to the east by the wind, ends up in the transpolar drift and gets flushed out the Fram Strait where it melts in a few months regardless of its age. Old thick ice gone.

Or it gets pushed to the west by the wind and ends up in the Beaufort Gyre where it can remain for several years, circulating in the Gyre and surviving the melt seasons because of its age, thickness, low salinity.

Not hard to imagine how these wind patterns can result in several year oscillations of ice gradually increasing and becoming thicker or gradually decreasing and becoming thinner if lots of multi-year ice is getting flushed out the Fram Strait.

Great animation of what really happens in the Arctic here. The animation ends in October 2013, but note how much older thicker ice has continued circulating into the Beaufort Gyre up until today. Its moved at least 500 kms farther in the Gyre.

“When politicians argue over President Obama’s new 2013 budget proposal, one thing that should escape criticism is the $8 million to be spent on designing a new polar-class icebreaker for the Coast Guard. The hard part will follow: It will cost nearly $1 billion to actually build the ship, and it’s $1 billion that Congress needs to find. ”

( guess Obama was not going to shout loud for an ice breaker, )

2. The U.S. is falling behind.

China, a country with no Arctic coast, is building icebreakers—and that should get America’s attention……….

“The study found that forecasts are quite accurate when sea ice conditions are close to the downward trend that has been observed in Arctic sea ice for the last 30 years. However, forecasts are not so accurate when sea ice conditions are unusually higher or lower compared to this trend.”

In other words they can make a good stab at it if it does what they though it was going to.

” The study found that forecasts are quite accurate when sea ice conditions are close to the downward trend that has been observed in Arctic sea ice for the last 30 years. However, forecasts are not so accurate when sea ice conditions are unusually higher or lower compared to this trend. ”

Right, so we have about 300 models that are basically doing nothing more intelligent than fitting a linear or perhaps quadratic “trend” and are a complete failure beyond that.

Because of the increased commercial use of the Northern sea route between Europe and the Pacific as a result of the decrease in summer sea ice. Interesting how you continue to ignore that in your post!
Also the Russians are building a new port up there from which they will be escorting tankers:
“the need for icebreakers is set to rise markedly after 2016, when Port Sabetta is put into operation and oil tankers will be in need of escorting. “

Phil’s Dad, the comment in the text was referring to the current parameters used to predict future conditions. As long as the current parameters were within the average range, the future ice condition prediction was pretty accurate. But if the current parameters were outside the average range by a bunch, future ice condition predictions were not as accurate. However, that said, I agree with your statement regarding funding and their conclusion. Knowledge of statistical-based modeling would have told them this would be so. They had to get funding to figure this out? Which means they didn’t know this would be the case in the first place? Sounds like we are funding scientists so that they can relearn what the last generation figured out. And every scientist, every PhD, every doctor, should be required to carry at least a minor in statistics at some point in their academic program.

The thicker older ice shows up slightly darker in this false color satellite pic from Jaxa (you have to put to use land-mask imagination on to distinguish between the Arctic ocean sea ice and the snow on land but it shows up reasonably well).

Same image from same date last year 2013. Open both in a new tab and click back and forth to see the change over the last year. Significant change.

Interesting plot but I’m a little suspicious of the not so parallel lines linking peaks. You could be kidding yourself. What would be clearer is to subtract the smooth DMI annual cycle and plot directly on top of say Potsdam Ap index.

It looks like it may match rather well but a direct comparison is needed, otherwise you could bend your lines to fit whatever was there.

When the ice returns, as is normal with a highly variable system with lots of short and long term oscillations, the watermelons will eventually have to turn their greenpeace boats into ice breaker chasers to save the baby ice….wait a minute….that means they will have to break the ice too!!!! Never mind. They will probably do a sit-in at your local Conoco Station to protest the killing of cute furry doe-eyed baby ice by big mean oil guys.

Because of the increased commercial use of the Northern sea route between Europe and the Pacific as a result of the decrease in summer sea ice. Interesting how you continue to ignore that in your post!
Also the Russians are building a new port up there from which they will be escorting tankers:
“the need for icebreakers is set to rise markedly after 2016, when Port Sabetta is put into operation and oil tankers will be in need of escorting.””

Perfectly true, but if you read further down it also says:

“At the moment there is a lot of talk about global warming, but this does not deter us. In any case, even the Kola Bay freezes in winter. I admit that in the Arctic in a few years, maybe even decades, there will be a period of navigation without icebreakers. Summer navigation will be expanded, in the long term not only the west, but the entire length of the Northern Sea Route will be navigable, and it is very possible that this will be year-round. But if you look at the history of our planet’s climate, there have been periods such as this on more than one occasion.”

Linear “trend” fits for such data are simplistic, disconnected from any reasonable mechanistic connection and frankly ridiculous. If you want to get a sense of what is happening just use a running average or a binomial filter. The way the March data jumps around for example a 2 – 3 year filter would be more revealing of behaviour over time.

====

Linear trends should be banned from climate science and those that continue to use them indicted for crimes against humanity ;)

However, a 20 filter is enough to take the short term bumps out of min/max guessing games and get a more stable indication of the underlying state of the ice that does not depend on the direction of the wind last week.

Why are the nine huge lakes in North America still shown as open water? This would seem to be a pretty easy thing to fix. Superior is still ice-covered, and I am sure the four big ones in Canada have not thawed out yet. This represents many thousands of square kilometers of ice.

Just the Antarctic sea ice extents ANOMALY alone last October was larger than Hudson’s Bay. At 1.8 Mkm^2, it was a little larger than half the size of Greenland! The edge of this excess Antarctic sea ice was right at 58 – 59 south latitude, or closer to the equator than ANY Arctic sea ice ever is at ANY time of year.

That was the EXCESS Antarctic sea ice!

The Antarctic sea ice extents anomaly has been steadily and consistently increasing since May 2010. If this increase continues at this consistent 4-1/2 year rate, the Antarctic sea ice will be blocking the Straits of Magellan and the shipping routes around Cape Horn within 8-10 years.

My TSI and Arctic temps above 80 N chart shows an average of a few day lag time between TSI spikes/Dips by the time Temps above 80 N move up or down. Charts were lined up as closes I could get for time frame. My lines are not all perfect placement but shows a good connection.
Maybe someone else can make some better charts.
I even made arctic Forecast for temps in 2013 for 5 day periods off TSI spikes and Dips and they did good as long no large weather systems crossed the 80 N area disturbing air at the surface in a big way.
What is so interesting is that TSI spikes or Dips showed up even if the sun was out during Summer or Not shining in the winter.
My early thoughts and feelings is Spikes/Dips of TSI from the sun are effecting The Temps at the N & S polls at all times of the year more then what people think.
More data is needed to prove my theory

“In the coming decades, as multi-year sea ice in the Arctic Ocean recedes, previously unreachable areas may open for maritime use for a few weeks each year. This opening maritime frontier has important national security implications and impact required future Navy capabilities.”

Yes but you still continue to cherry pick your quotes to imply different conclusions than are presented in the source you cite!

the Russians were using the NE ARCTIC route commercially from the 1920′s.
yes but minimally, according to your source the activity was ‘minimal’ as recently as the 90’s.

“Looking at transit data, we have already surpassed last year’s volumes. 830,000-840,000 tons of cargo were transported at that time, we have now transported one million tons and by the end of navigation, which will continue for almost 2 more months, we will be closer to 1.2 million. Compared with the minimal level of traffic on the Northern Sea Route in the 90’s, which amounted to approximately 1.5 million tons, we have already crossed the 3 million ton mark.”
The Northern route was declared open and commercial exploitation began in 1935.

We now use nuclear powered ice breakers in the Summer, Russia is building the largest ice breaker ever and even the Chinese are building ice breakers.

Looking far forward, we have the Atomflot development programme lasting 30 years, and on the whole, the prospects are certainly good, if not very good.

30 years!!!!!!

I though we were supposed to be ice free today but no we need ice breakers in the summer as well.

Some of the current fleet are nearing their end of service life and have to be replaced even without the increase in traffic.
‘Ice free’ in the fall (september) doesn’t mean there will be no ice in the summer, given some of the choke points there will always be a need for escort ships, in fact as the article says they expect more larger ships designed to exploit the arctic route which implies that two icebreakers will be needed instead of one!
In 2010 two yachts completed the circumnavigation of the arctic in a single season (both the Northern sea route and the NW passage).

Thanks for sharing those two satellite shots. I did what you said, and after falling behind schedule by having a blast, clicking to and fro between the two tabs, I am struck by the increase in the ice thickness.

The exception seems to be the Laptev Sea north of central Siberia. That makes sense, when you remember the cross-polar-flow kicked in fairly often during the winter, sending Siberian air across to Canada (and then down to freeze my socks off in New Hampshire.) That flow would be offshore in the Laptev Sea, pushing the ice across towards Canada.

As you head east from North of Scandinavia the Northeast passage is wide open in Barents Sea, looks like it is open or will soon be open along the coasts of the Kara Sea and Laptev Sea (due the aforementioned offshore winds) but when you proceed east to the East Siberian Sea you start to run into the thicker ice. While there is less ice south of Bering Strait than there was the prior (record setting) winter, north of Bering Strait in the Chukchi Sea it looks thicker.

This may present a bit of a problem for shipping in the Northeast passage. It doesn’t matter much if you are following a super-icebreaker, when the winds turn north and the ice starts shifting south. The channel behind an icebreaker can close like the jaws of a bear trap. (And winds can get strong, from the north, along the Siberian coast during the summer. When you have inland temperatures of 85 degrees and offshore temperatures of 34; it generates one heck of a sea-breeze.)

(If an oil tanker gets trapped up there, for even a day, Greenpeace will be doing back-flips. So the Russians won’t mention it.)

My own take is that what really matters is the temperature of the water under the ice. My assumption is that the water is colder, and less stratified. (In calmer conditions a layer of warmer, more-salty water is below colder, less-salty surface water. However conditions have been far from calm, with large areas ice-free at the start of the past two winters. This is especially true of Barents Sea, however the waters north and south of Bering Strait on the Pacific side had below-normal ice-cover for the first half of winter. Without that protective cover the waters get churned an don’t stratify as much.) However an assumption is only a guess.

It is not that we don’t have a clue, concerning arctic sea-ice. We just need more clues. We’ll watch and wait for more clues.

interesting , these people live in the real world of danger so have to make different decisions to alarmist statements

“According to statistics from the Baltic Sea icebreaking authorities, 10750 vessels
received assistance from icebreakers this season”

“FOREWORD
The winter of the last season has been again pretty cold. We can not tell so far
whether this is a real global warming or a process of normal alternation of warm and
cold winters. Within the limits of a separate historical period we will learn about it
later.
Can anyone tell in the affirmative now «Global warming has come, and warm winters
are established constantly for long times»? Can anyone assert there is a temporary
period of alternation of warm and cold winters? The choice of an appropriate
scenario as for a warm or a cold winter approach is certainly the right of every
member State. The real problem is that there is no way to predict authentically the
type of winters and ice conditions on long-term basis. We tend to consider that after
the period of some warm winters there will come winters with really low
temperatures.”

In reply to:
“While this continues a strong pattern of greater-than-average sea ice extent in Antarctica for the past two years, Antarctic sea ice remains more variable year-to-year than the Arctic.”

William:
The sudden change in the Antarctic sea ice supports the assertion that the Arctic sea ice will recover and will reach record levels.

The NSIDC polar sea ice summary attempts to brush away the fact that there has been a significant sudden change in the Antarctic sea ice extent with the statement “continues a strong pattern of greater-than-average sea ice extent in [the] Antarctic for the past two years” by appealing to natural variability without a cause, ignoring the paleo record that unequivocally shows cycles of warming everyone of which was followed by cooling, and ignoring the fact that Antarctic sea extent has increased 2013-2014 over 2012-2013.

There is now two sigma higher Antarctic sea ice for every month of the year.

There is a physical reason (a forcing function) why the planet cyclically warmed and cooled (both hemispheres) in the past. The mechanism that caused the cyclic warming and cooling in the past must be capable of affecting both poles simultaneously, which rules out ocean currents and other natural internal climate forcing mechanisms. The past warming and cooling cycles were not caused by changes in atmospheric CO2.

https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/davis-and-taylor-wuwt-submission.pdf
Davis and Taylor: “Does the current global warming signal reflect a natural cycle”
William: Is the warming and cooling cycle (342 cycles, period 500 years, 1000 years, and 1500 years, until the limit of the proxy record is reached) sometimes abrupt cooling, caused by solar magnetic cycle changes and a change to the sun that is the fundamental cause of the solar magnetic cycle and is the cause of abrupt climate change on the earth? Yes.

…We found 342 natural warming events (NWEs) corresponding to this definition, distributed over the past 250,000 years …. …. The 342 NWEs contained in the Vostok ice core record are divided into low-rate warming events (LRWEs; < 0.74oC/century) and high rate warming events (HRWEs; ≥ 0.74oC /century) (Figure). … ….The current global warming signal is therefore the slowest and among the smallest in comparison with all HRWEs in the Vostok record, although the current warming signal could in the coming decades yet reach the level of past HRWEs for some parameters. The figure shows the most recent 16 HRWEs in the Vostok ice core data during the Holocene, interspersed with a number of LRWEs. …. ….We were delighted to see the paper published in Nature magazine online (August 22, 2012 issue) reporting past climate warming events in the Antarctic similar in amplitude and warming rate to the present global warming signal. The paper, entitled "Recent Antarctic Peninsula warming relative to Holocene climate and ice – shelf history" and authored by Robert Mulvaney and colleagues of the British Antarctic Survey ( Nature , 2012, doi:10.1038/nature11391),reports two recent natural warming cycles, one around 1500 AD and another around 400 AD, measured from isotope (deuterium) concentrations in ice cores bored adjacent to recent breaks in the ice shelf in northeast Antarctica. ….

Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper. William: As this paper shows there has been 9 warming and cooling periods in the last 11,000 years, on the Greenland ice sheet. The late Gerald Bond was able to track 23 warming and cooling cycles (500 years, 1000 years, and 1500 years cycle same period as found in the Southern hemisphere data) in the Northern hemisphere by the analysis of ocean floor sediments which is the limit of that proxy data source.

The Great Lakes are south of where I’m sat (~ 50 degrees N). Certainly well outside the Arctic circle!

The Great Lakes are NOT included in the NSIDC’s sea ice extents.
The Antarctic ice shelves (approximately 1.3 Mkm^2) are NOt included in the Antarctic sea ice extents numbers either.

At its yearly maximum of 14.5 – 15.0 Mkm^2, the Arctic sea ice extents is very closely approximated by a “cap” across the Arctic Ocean, reaching from the pole at 90 north down to a latitude of 70.6 Mkm^2.

At its recent minimums of “only” 4 Mkm^2 in mid-September, the Arctic sea ice extents is confined to a very tiny area between the pole and only 80 north. At that time of year near the equinox, the sun – even at noon! – is less than 20 degrees above the horizon.

So, on the same days that the southernmost edge of the Arctic sea ice is only exposed to 125 watt/m^2 at noon, every square meter of that 1.8 Mkm^2 “excess” Antarctic sea ice is radiated by over 530 watts/m^2!

So, what is more important? Well, that 125 watts hitting the ocean surface, the “dark” Arctic ocean waters are absorbing 90 watts/m^2; yet the Antarctic sea ice is reflecting 419 watts/m^2 of the 530 watts hitting it back into space.

Seems like that a ratio of 4.6:1 is relevant.

We can lose ALL of today’s Arctic sea ice and STILL be rapidly cooling the planet due to the excess Antarctic sea ice.

It’s entertaining watching the Guardian trying to cherry pick the ‘bad’ news about the March extent. I was on the comment thread and gave them a good kicking, but alas finally got banned again this morning. They didn’t like my inconvenient facts, references and pointing out the failed prediction of Wieslaw Maslowski for 2013 ice free Arctic. They attempted a rebuttal and I rebutted back about Professor Peter Wadhams’ looming failed prediction. I also mention Arctic ice volume up.

Guardian – 2 April 2014
“Arctic sea ice falls to fifth lowest level on record”
National Snow and Ice Data Center says findings reinforce trend that Arctic sea ice disappearing much faster than expected
Arctic sea ice remained on its death spiral on Wednesday,…….They also noted that the Arctic had had an unusually warm temperatures in March.

No mention of volume. No mention of the late spurt in March. No mention that using the March extent to predict the summer minimum is a crap shoot. I showed them a graph showing the problem with this.

Just the Antarctic sea ice extents ANOMALY alone last October was larger than Hudson’s Bay. At 1.8 Mkm^2, it was a little larger than half the size of Greenland! The edge of this excess Antarctic sea ice was right at 58 – 59 south latitude, or closer to the equator than ANY Arctic sea ice ever is at ANY time of year.

That was the EXCESS Antarctic sea ice!

The Antarctic sea ice extents anomaly has been steadily and consistently increasing since May 2010. If this increase continues at this consistent 4-1/2 year rate, the Antarctic sea ice will be blocking the Straits of Magellan and the shipping routes around Cape Horn within 8-10 years.

Except of course that’s not where the ‘excess Antarctic sea ice’ is!
The Antarctic sea ice area anomaly at the maximum was ~0.6Mkm^2, the anomaly was mostly negative during 2011. In recent years the Arctic sea ice area anomaly has exceeded -1Mkm^2 regularly and at times exceeded -2Mkm^2.

I also note that the Guardian did NOT link to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. It was written by no other than Suzanne Goldenberg. The bias of the Guardian is quite astonishing. You would think they would want to report good news!@#$% The fact is it is not about wanting good news or about the science, it’s about using co2 to change the energy structure of the world and insert the Guardians ideological beliefs into as much of our lives as possible.http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/apr/02/arctic-sea-ice-fall-lowest-levels

Suzanne Goldenberg is the one who made up the fairy tale about America’s first climate refugees. At that time I registerd as a commenter and thrashed her, and pointed out they could not possibly be America’s first climate refugees such as droughts which lasted 100s of years, other climate refugees from the 1950s etc.

A common theme we continue to see in these ice posts is that arctic ice extent is much more about surface wind patterns than it is about arctic air temps. My conclusion is ice extent has very little if anything to do with any warming caused by CO2 (but substantially influenced by wind & ocean currents , which in turn may effect year to year “global” temperatures).

Just the Antarctic sea ice extents ANOMALY alone last October was larger than Hudson’s Bay. At 1.8 Mkm^2, it was a little larger than half the size of Greenland! The edge of this excess Antarctic sea ice was right at 58 – 59 south latitude, or closer to the equator than ANY Arctic sea ice ever is at ANY time of year.

That was the EXCESS Antarctic sea ice!

The Antarctic sea ice extents anomaly has been steadily and consistently increasing since May 2010. If this increase continues at this consistent 4-1/2 year rate, the Antarctic sea ice will be blocking the Straits of Magellan and the shipping routes around Cape Horn within 8-10 years.

Except of course that’s not where the ‘excess Antarctic sea ice’ is!
The Antarctic sea ice area anomaly at the maximum was ~0.6Mkm^2, the anomaly was mostly negative during 2011. In recent years the Arctic sea ice area anomaly has exceeded -1Mkm^2 regularly and at times exceeded -2Mkm^2.

Er, uhm, what? You are dead wrong.

1. Please, “you” are trying to confuse the issue by using Antarctic sea ice “area” to compare to my consistent use of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extents. Area will ALWAYS be less than extents, so your comment is invalid and (deliberately) misleading.

2. The “excess” Antarctic sea ice extents IS at the northern edge of the entire Antarctic ice area.
14.0 Mkm^2 of land-based ice.
1.3 Mkm^2 of fixed ice shelves – These are NOT included in the NSIDC’s “sea ice” totals.
19.6 Mkm^2 of varying sea ice extents.
Total Antarctic ice = 37.1 Mkm^2 at maximum in mid-to-late September each year.
That puts the edge of the Antarctic sea ice at 58-59 south latitude.

Now, where the blazing ice-caps does your arithmetic claim any increase in Antarctic sea is going to be?

3. You CANNOT compare “extents” or “areas” of the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice! THEY ARE NOT AT EQUAL LATITUDES at ANY DAY-OF-YEAR. Over the course of the year, the Antarctic sea ice extents is exposed to roughly 3.1 TIMES as much sunlight as is the Arctic sea ice extents. By your logic, a gain on the Antarctic could be “matched” by an equal loss of area in the Arctic.

Wrong!

The edge of the Antarctic sea ice at maximum in September and October each year – that sea ice area that IS expanding and HAS BEEN continually expanding since May 2010 – is exposed to 5x the radiation than is hitting the southern most edge of the Arctic sea ice. Each square kilometer of “excess” Antarctic sea needs to be matched by a loss of 4.6 square kilometers of Arctic sea ice just to keep the planet from getting colder!

(Even near the spring equinox, when the Arctic sea ice extents is nearing maximum and the Antarctic sea ice extents is at its yearly minimum, the two ice caps are receiving equal solar radiation. It is not until the first week in April that the arctic sea ice is finally exposed to more sunlight than is the edge of the Antarctic sea ice. Over the arctic summer, the northern sea ice is being hit by ever-less solar energy at the TOA, getting the lowest solar energy on July 5 each year at only 1310 watts/m^2 at TOA. But over the northern winter, when the Arctic sea ice is in total darkness yet the solar radiation is at its highest, that “excess” Antarctic sea ice is hit by the southern sun 18 – 24 hours a day.)

4. Worse, any “loss” of Arctic sea ice you seem to fear so much from today’s extents means even MORE heat energy is lost from the open ocean than is gained by the little bit of added heat absorbed by the open water! The open Arctic ocean LOSES more energy every 24 hour day from the end of August through the beginning of April by increased evaporation, increased conduction losses, increased radiation losses and increased convection losses than what is gained in the few hours of sunlight hitting the water surface at low angles.

RACookPE1978 says:
April 3, 2014 at 7:10 am
At its recent minimums of “only” 4 Mkm^2 in mid-September, the Arctic sea ice extents is confined to a very tiny area between the pole and only 80 north. At that time of year near the equinox, the sun – even at noon! – is less than 20 degrees above the horizon.

So, on the same days that the southernmost edge of the Arctic sea ice is only exposed to 125 watt/m^2 at noon, every square meter of that 1.8 Mkm^2 “excess” Antarctic sea ice is radiated by over 530 watts/m^2!

Except for the purpose of your comparison it’s the open water that used to be covered by Arctic sea ice in September that counts, and your Antarctic insolation value is grossly erroneous. And for both polar regions, a wavelength-weighted albedo of ~0.5 is more appropriate than the 0.72 and 0.79 you use for Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, respectively.

Interesting Richard. The last paragraph makes me wonder whether he hasn’t got the message yet. Doesn’t he realise there will be no ice soon. / sarc

Looking far forward, we have the Atomflot development programme lasting 30 years, and on the whole, the prospects are certainly good, if not very good. Freight traffic in the Arctic will increase to 30 million tons according to the average optimistic forecast. Port Sabetta alone will contribute 16 million tons. This means there will still be work available for icebreakers and this is what is most important.

The study found that forecasts are quite accurate when sea ice conditions are close to the downward trend that has been observed in Arctic sea ice for the last 30 years. However, forecasts are not so accurate when sea ice conditions are unusually higher or lower compared to this trend.

I am still gobsmacked that such a stupid statement was published in a professional paper. It not only had to be written by an alleged scientist, but approved by three peer reviewers and an “editor”.

RACookPE1978 says:
April 3, 2014 at 7:10 am
At its recent minimums of “only” 4 Mkm^2 in mid-September, the Arctic sea ice extents is confined to a very tiny area between the pole and only 80 north. At that time of year near the equinox, the sun – even at noon! – is less than 20 degrees above the horizon.

So, on the same days that the southernmost edge of the Arctic sea ice is only exposed to 125 watt/m^2 at noon, every square meter of that 1.8 Mkm^2 “excess” Antarctic sea ice is radiated by over 530 watts/m^2!

Except for the purpose of your comparison it’s the open water that used to be covered by Arctic sea ice in September that counts, and your Antarctic insolation value is grossly erroneous. And for both polar regions, a wavelength-weighted albedo of ~0.5 is more appropriate than the 0.72 and 0.79 you use for Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, respectively.

By the way, the edge of the Arctic sea ice extents is NOT 75 north … That would require 8.69 Mkm^2 of sea ice! On September 15, the ENTIRE Arctic sea ice extents is only 4.85 Mkm^2 At that area the edge of the Arctic sea ice is up at 78.8 latitude. Each “lost” square meter of sea ice extents is hit by only 171 watts/m^2 of direct radiation. About 10% to 15% more of indirect radiation, but lets stick to direct radiation only.

(You did remember that you have to correct for the radiation received on a flat surface, right?)
And that 171 watts/m^2 is at noon.

So, let’s look at what radiation really received each two hour interval at 78.8 latitude on September 15.

Now, let’s look at the Antarctic sea ice edge on September 15 over the same 24 hour period.

19.7 Mkm^2 of sea ice extents. Edge of antarctic sea ice extents is NOT at 60 south, but is rather at 58.7 south latitude. (You know, all these errors sure add up, don’t they? Gee, you’d think you would not keep making errors the “wrong” way each time for each example …..)

So, let’s look at what direct solar radiation is really received each two hour interval at -58.7 latitude on a flat surface on September 15.

Funny. I don’t see your supposed 24-hour average solar radiation value of 181 watts/m^2 ANYWHERE in that list. (Maybe your source measured the value for 60 south at 6:00 am and used it for the whole day? But, assume you do the stupid thing and pretend you can add all of the individual hours up over a 24 hour day and divide by the number of hours. Well, doing that error gives you 154 watts/m^2 over an entire day. Which is still wrong!)

Besides, an “average” value for the whole day is not only meaningless, but it is foolish to pretend it is anything but meaningless! The amount of energy reflected and absorbed varies minute by minute as the solar elevation angle varies each minute across the northern sky. Pretending some average albedo or average radiation can be used is dead wrong.

My sea ice albedo is from Judith Curry’s actual measured values from the Arctic SHEBA experiment at 78-80 for each day of year from March through October. Sea ice albedo (direct radiation) on day-of-year 258 is 0.82 at all solar elevation angles.

For direct solar radiation on a clear Arctic day, the open water albedo varies by solar elevation angle and wind speed of course, and so – like the solar radiation hitting each meter of open water – the amount of energy absorbed or reflected from sea ice and from open water replacing that sea ice varies STRONGLY each minute of each hour of each day as well.

So, on September 15, open ocean albedo for direct radiation will vary from 0.159 at dawn to 0.093 at 1100 and 1300 hours, then go back up to 0.159 at dusk. (The open ocean water albedo for indirect (diffuse) radiation) remains near-constant across all solar elevations at 0.065, but diffuse radiation is only 10% to 15% of the direct radiation on a flat surface. In any case, the above numbers are for direct radiation only.)

All that cold air that has been pouring down across the eastern North America this winter had been traversing across the Hudson’s Bay. Even right now it is still -20 across much of the bay. As a result it seems that the ice on the bay is unusually thick this year. I would expect that the melting of the Hudson’s bay to ocurr much later than normal this year.

crosspatch says: There is a growing need for reliable sea ice predictions.
Why? Is it a growing number of people wanting to know out of idle curiosity or is there really a “need” for these predictions and if so, what is that need?

That’s my line.
If it can be said there is a growing need for sea ice prediction I’d like to know why.
I am skeptical of why we spend vast sums monitoring so many things without any regard for where those resources may otherwise be needed for more serious pursuits.

Suppose there was a 5 year hiatus on all ice monitoring. Maybe even only check every 5 years.
Or even 10? Would the resulting data not tell the same story?

If one of the WUWT graphers were to go back and plot ice extent at 5 year increments over the history of ice measurement what would it reveal? The same thing we look at now, right?

Because of the increased commercial use of the Northern sea route between Europe and the Pacific as a result of the decrease in summer sea ice. Interesting how you continue to ignore that in your post!

Interesting you missed the last paragraph in the link. They project increased business for their ICEBREAKERS for the next 30 years! Who needs ice breakers in say 2025?

Gary Pearse says:
April 3, 2014 at 8:43 am
April 3rd and you can still walk all on ice and snow from Sapporo Japan to Detroit.

“You’d need to take some very big steps to cross to Sakhalin!”

Why do that, Walk on the ice to land bordering the Sea of Okhotsk? Anyway Phil, put away your tweezers and magnifying glass, my main point relates to reports almost a decade ago when the Japanese reported that you used to be able to see the arctic ice at Hokkaido’s north coast and that now it requires several days sea voyage to catch site of the ice and they were talking about at the height of ice in Feb-March. Ice has been jammed up against their coast for months and hey its already late for their spring cherries in April.

I guess you didn’t bother to even look at Fig. 1 of Curry et al. (2001) Applications of SHEBA/FIRE data to evaluation of snow/ice albedo parameterizations, did you, let alone read the paper? Or read Perovich (1996) The optical properties of sea ice?

“Edge of antarctic sea ice extents is NOT at 60 south, but is rather at 58.7 south latitude.” So you calculated a very irregular outline that varies between years to a precision of 0.1°, did you? Doubtful, but at any rate the edge of the ice at any given year is only half the story for an energy calculation. The difference has to be calculated on the area between that and that of ‘normal’ (median or mean recent) value. 75°N is the average latitude of the ‘gap’ in the current vs. 30 year average September Arctic ice cover, and 60°S is a reasonable value to use for the Antarctic.

@ Bruce Cobb, there are three melting seasons left to see how accurately (or not) Wadhams called it. And even if he and Wieslaw Maslowski are off by a decade in their feedback-driven estimates of ice-free summer conditions they’d still be far closer than the majority of conservative modelers.

I guess you didn’t bother to even look at Fig. 1 of Curry et al. (2001) Applications of SHEBA/FIRE data to evaluation of snow/ice albedo parameterizations, did you, let alone read the paper? Or read Perovich (1996) The optical properties of sea ice?

“Edge of antarctic sea ice extents is NOT at 60 south, but is rather at 58.7 south latitude.” So you calculated a very irregular outline that varies between years to a precision of 0.1°, did you? Doubtful, but at any rate the edge of the ice at any given year is only half the story for an energy calculation. The difference has to be calculated on the area between that and that of ‘normal’ (median or mean recent) value. 75°N is the average latitude of the ‘gap’ in the current vs. 30 year average September Arctic ice cover, and 60°S is a reasonable value to use for the Antarctic.

1. Those average “Daily” insolation values are worthless, and more than useless, are (deliberately) misleading because they infer people can use average “radiation levels” and multiply by “average” albedoes! The radiation received at each hour (itself a coarse “average” for the entire 60 minutes) must be multiplied by the albedo at that same hour for the same (assumed) cloud cover and relative humidity and atmospheric clarity, because the sun is changing elevation angle each hour through ever-deeper (or shallower) air masses.

Those 12 hours when the sun is below the horizon radiate long wave radiation each hour, evaporate latent heat energy each hour, convect and conduct heat energy each hour to the ever-changing arctic air temperature – which, by the way, is ALSO not at some “average” daily temperature either!

If your solar insolation model of 2006 generates “average daily values” then, it too, is useless. Show the results for each hour of each day for each month in question.
Show the results for direct radiation and diffuse radiation separately.
Show the assumed cloud cover and atmospheric turbidity for each day.

2. Hmmn, I DID read and use the sea ice albedo daily measured values from Curry.

3. Hmmmn. I am using the curve for the daily Arctic ice areas for the WORST case (the lowest ever) sea ice extents year because that IS what actually happened in 2012. If, in some year in the future, the only concern (from a CAGW religious standpoint worried about Arctic sea ice reduction) is an even greater sea ice retreat! We know absolutely that the low sea ice in 2012 was recovered (re-frozen) in 2013, and the so-called arctic amplification is also falsified by the recovery from 2007 into the following years of 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011. The so-called arctic amplification could ONLY be validated IF the sea ice gets lower some year LATER than 2012.

Why should a higher average sea ice value from 30 and 40 years ago matter to the difference between one a square meter of sea ice either melting (open water) or sea ice (still frozen) radiation receive in September this year? THIS YEAR is the year that will be either melted water or frozen sea ice. That square meter, square kilometer, or million square kilometers will either melt, or it will freeze on any given day.

The resulting heat balance is instantaneous: what “excess” is reflected from an increased Antarctic sea ice extents cannot ever be recovered. It is lost immediately to space. What little bit is absorbed in the Arctic by the difference between a melted sq meter and an ice-covered square meter will be either positive or negative. The little bit extra that is hits the exposed flat surface might be absorbed by sea ice or reflected from sea ice, it might be either absorbed by the open water or reflected from the open water. In either case, once absorbed, the open water or sea ice gains energy, which is subsequently IMMEDIATELY either heats the water or the ice (storing energy to be released later in the day or night), evaporates the water, convects into the air, or re-radiates as longwave radiation.

Because the heat balance from an open sq meter of open ocean or sea ice depends NOT on any previous year’s “average” value, the only location that matters IS the edge of the sea ice THAT YEAR. In our case, not 1970 values, but 2012 (worst case for low sea ice) or 2013 (the record high sea ice extents for the Antarctic ice).

To compare sea ice to sea ice if yo didn’t want to use the very low 2012 arctic values, you could also useably compare the average of 2011 and 2013 values for both.

Oh, by the way, Antarctic sea ice extents has been increasing steadily now since May 2010. The edge of the Antarctic sea ice extents IS a very, very good approximation of a circle centered on the south pole. The Arctic, not so much. A small area towards Alaska gets as far south as 75 south, a larger area north of Iceland is even closer to the pole than 80 north.

Measured Arctic air temperatures at 80 north in the summer – you know, that time of the year when the sun is shining all the time up at 80 north – have not only NOT increased since 1959, but are now decreasing just as the Arctic sea ice decreases.

Perhaps the chart which should be presented most regularly is the total sea ice extent of both arctic and antarctic against long-term means.

I think you’ll find that for the majority of the past 12 months, that figure has been above the long-term average.

That’s not as good a measure as total sea ice volume, which could be smaller area*greater depth being greater than larger area*lesser depth of course.

But all the scaremongerers can be silenced if presented with the data for total sea ice volume, for that is what will determine sea level changes, after all. At least until the whole of Greenland melts in never-never land…..

Just for comparison MASIE showed day 73 as this year’s maximum. They include satellite imagery and operational data along with microwave sensor results, so the amount of ice extent is different. Usually the numbers are close at the annual maximums, but MASIE will show much more ice than the others in the summer.

I can also observe that since the max on March 14, MASIE shows increases in ice extent in the Central Arctic and Barents Sea, offset by losses in Baffin-Gulf of St. Lawrence, Bering Sea and Baltic Sea.

As a matter of fact, the maximum so for for Central Arctic ice extent occurred in the last report dated April 2.

@ Bruce Cobb, there are three melting seasons left to see how accurately (or not) Wadhams called it. And even if he and Wieslaw Maslowski are off by a decade in their feedback-driven estimates of ice-free summer conditions they’d still be far closer than the majority of conservative modelers.
Hang it up, Magma. The whole “arctic death spiral” thing is nothing but a Warmist fantasy, based more on wishful thinking and confirmation bias than anything else.
There is nothing that unusual going on in the arctic, any more than anyplace else. Indeed, with cooling likely in the coming decades, in a decades’ time the ice could very well be back close to 1979 levels.

@njsnowfan says:
April 3, 2014 at 2:00 am
Climate Scientist they say the sun does not effect temperatures on earth directly. I find that NOT to be true, TSI and Arctic temps above 80 N.
——————————————————————
I had a similar thought at the beginning of this year. The rapid increase in solar activity last fall matched the change in night time temps in No California, where I live. The affect was a rise of 20+ F for the night time. The days became comfortable. I remarked on that with a comment in January, but the several responses were negative. I wondered if part of the reason for the connection was due to the proximity to the Pacific? Is this a direct response of the ocean reacting to the changes in solar activity?

I don’t think anybody has made the claim that the Arctic will be ice free year-around any time soon.

“Within a year or two or three there will be no sea-ice cover on the Arctic Ocean in September for the first time in about 3 million years. Within a decade or two the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free all-year round.” –Paul Beckwith in 2013

“On current trends, the Arctic will be entirely ice-free in September by about 2016, and will be ice-free year-round by the early 2030s.” –Kevin Drum in 2011

Keep in mind that last Summer there was so little Arctic sea-ice that two or three rowboats were able to get more than halfway to the pole (from Seattle). In fact, in 2006 there was so little sea-ice that I was able to get within 5000km of the pole using a clapped out VW bus! Think about that.

Keep up the hard work. It is no sin to test ideas against reality. You actually learn as much, of not more, by being wrong as you do when you are right. And learning is discovery. And discovery is cool.

I think it is only the upper surface of the scientific community that has been corrupted by the madness of current power-politics and money-grubbing. The scum always rises to the top. Beneath there are many scientists who are in love with truth and discovery, just as you are.

My own experience has been that the blue-collar scientists who do all the work actually appreciate the interest of laymen. Sometimes even my most idiotic questions make them pause and scratch their heads, for it involves a line of thought they hadn’t considered.

You are on the right track, to consider the effects of those nine, huge lakes. It is striking, in the fall, how they warm downwind areas by being unfrozen, and being like radiators that remember summer’s heat. (The same can be said for coastal areas of ocean, on the Arctic coast, Hudson and Baffin Bay, and the Baltic, but these areas are actually included in “extent” graphs.)

Few consider the buffering effect these huge lakes have on temperatures in North America. However the day they are frozen over areas downwind see temperatures plunge. (The same can be said for Hudson Bay, etc.)

Few have a clue how huge and deep Great Bear and Great and Lesser Slave lakes are. They rival the southern Great Lakes. (Lake Winnipeg is much shallower, but significant.) To look at thermometers alone, without considering the effect of these huge radiators, is to gain a false impression.

In the same manner, to look at spring temperatures without understanding those lakes are huge refrigerators, is to gain a different false impression.

I am glad to see someone paying attention to mundane details, such as what is actually happening. Hudson Bay, and also Baffin Bay, have been interesting to watch this winter, most especially because in the north, where it is coldest, there have been occasional patches of open water.

I hate to say this about my fellow Skeptics, but they do tend to freak-out, despair and generally have fits, when there is open water in the arctic. Perhaps it is only in reaction to Alarmists cheering and high-five-ing in glee. I feel everyone should just calm down. Open water can appear in Antarctica, even at temperatures of minus-fifty. It is due to the wind pushing ice away from shore, and relatively “warm” water up-welling, (And by “warm” I mean below the freezing point of fresh water but above the freezing point of salt water.) It is something called a “polynya.”

Because the winds were so strong from the north, polynyas appeared in the north of both Baffin Bay and Hudson Bay last winter. As soon as open water appeared, there was a spike in the local 2 meter surface temperatures. (Wild cheering from Alarmists.) There were then resultant updrafts and weak low pressure systems, until the open water froze over. Local temperatures then plunged. (Wild cheering from Skeptics.)

I think we need to pay less attention to 2 meter surface temperatures, and more attention to the temperature of the sea. Any time a polynya forms the sea is getting severely cooled by churning winds. Also the ice that has been moved south is going somewhere. In the case of Baffin Bay it was surging south right along the coast of Labrador and out into the Atlantic, creating above-average ice-extents in an area adjacent to the Gulf Stream.

Hmm. Think about that. If you dump extra ice next to the Gulf Stream, will the Gulf Stream be warmer? (The same goes for surges of ice heading south through Fram Strait, and eventually Denmark Strait, on the east coast of Greenland.)

In the case of Hudson Bay, the ice is pushed south to what? A coastline. It can’t flush out into the Atlantic. So, how thick is the ice down there on the south coast?

I wish they would up-date the Navy maps, but the most recent map shows a thin red line along the southern coast of Hudson Bay, indicative of ice piled up fifteen feet thick, even as ice up along the north coast is as little as three feet thick.

This is what you notice, when you pay attention to mundane details. Only reality can produce situations as illogical as ice thicker in the south than in the north. Computer models are far more “logical,” and seldom produce ice fifteen feet thick in the south and three feet thick in the north.

Another mundane detail I noticed this past winter was how different the cross-polar-flow was from the winter of 1976-1977. Back then the air took a short route, and this past winter it took a long route. In 1976-1977 the air spent little time over the Arctic Sea, jumping across from East Siberia to Alaska via the Bering Strait and Chukchi Sea, whereas this winter it took the longest possible route, over the Pole itself and then down west of Greenland through the Canadian Archipelago. What difference did this make, down in the USA?

I get to keep my bragging rights. It was colder in 1976-1977, in terms of record-setting cold. It never hit minus-twenty on the clam flats of Maine, this past winter. It didn’t get close. But I think this past winter may have had a more chilling effect, in the long term. Why?

This past winter’s cross-polar-flow had to cross a lot of water, chilling the water, before it gave the eastern USA a bone-chilling winter. A mundane detail I noted was how minus-seventy air departing Siberia is warmed crossing the Arctic Ocean, even when that ocean is ice-covered. The winds crack the ice, exposing cold wind to “warm” open water in “leads”, and polynyas form at the top of Baffin and Hudson Bay, warming the winds more, until they are a balmy minus-thirty, as they start south to freeze my socks off.

Selah. (Pause, and consider.)

If the Arctic Ocean lost enough heat to warm the cross-polar-flow between twenty and forty degrees, as it moved from Siberia and Canada, is the Arctic Ocean warmer this spring?

I refuse to answer. I’ll stick with observing the mundane details.

However I will say this: I decided, last spring, that I should stop listening to people who seemed less than logical, and that I should spend a year actually observing arctic weather and arctic sea-ice myself, to see the truth. It is darn tedious. I have better things to do, and I’m going to be darn glad when the year is over, and I will have fulfilled my vow. However it is not the arctic itself that is tedious. The arctic is actually amazing and beautiful. What is tedious is having to listen to people talk like they know a hill of beans about sea-ice, when they quite obviously have never payed attention to the mundane details.

Once my year is done and my vow is fulfilled, I fully intend to turn a cold shoulder to the topic of sea-ice, and to attend to the mundane details of more profitable pursuits, such as collecting aluminum cans from a roadside.

Pamela Gray posted “And let me also add that every school specialist, principal, and superintendent in the public school system should also be required to have graduate level statistics classes in their coursework.”

If they did have such qualifications, they wouldn’t pursue a career in public education. I think they’d want a $100K+/year job after experience and public schools do not pay that. The people educating our children are paid a salary that’s at a level pays less than a bartender or stripper (after taxes).

It will have to come from somewhere else. Critical thinking and statistical analysis are pretty hard concepts to understand.

Why we even look at arctic sea ice is an interesting question. Without Alarmism, it would be of relatively little interest, except to those in the oil and shipping industries.
I suppose learning has its’ own rewards. But yeah, mainly, the reason we skeptics/climate realists look at it is to see if, in fact, the Alarmists are correct in their claim that the “arctic is melting”. Even further, if the arctic “is melting” what does that mean, and why? The Alarmists have latched onto the meme of arctic sea ice disappearing completely in summer for two reasons: the biggie is that it sounds scary, so is useful in fanning the flames of climate alarmism. As usual, they take a certain fact, that arctic sea ice declined over the 30-year period 1980 – 2010, and extrapolate like crazy. The idea that the ice cover beginning in 1980 was perhaps a bit high then, maybe due to 30-year period of cooler doesn’t seem to occur to them, or gets dismissed out of hand because it doesn’t fit their climatist idee fixe. Not content with that, though, they’ve fabricated this idea of a “death spiral” (ooh, scary-sounding), with all sorts of positive feedbacks and consequences for the earth’s climate (all negative, of course). Alarmists desperately NEED for arctic sea ice to decline. It has great value for climatism. We look, and point out that, no, although there has been a decline over that 30-year period, that in itself means nothing. Further, the ice appears to have stabilized, and may be growing again, much the same way temperatures have stabilized for as much as 17 years or more, and appear to be dropping now. Also, it turns out that watching and learning about the ice can be fun. Especially when it doesn’t do what the Alarmists want it to.

Because of the increased commercial use of the Northern sea route between Europe and the Pacific as a result of the decrease in summer sea ice. Interesting how you continue to ignore that in your post!

Interesting you missed the last paragraph in the link. They project increased business for their ICEBREAKERS for the next 30 years! Who needs ice breakers in say 2025?

The Russians will still need them because the ice will probably not be gone year round before then!
Just because the ice is gone in September doesn’t mean that there’s no use for icebreakers during the rest of the year.

Steve Oregon says:
April 3, 2014 at 9:19 am
crosspatch says: There is a growing need for reliable sea ice predictions.
Why? Is it a growing number of people wanting to know out of idle curiosity or is there really a “need” for these predictions and if so, what is that need?

That’s my line.
If it can be said there is a growing need for sea ice prediction I’d like to know why.
I am skeptical of why we spend vast sums monitoring so many things without any regard for where those resources may otherwise be needed for more serious pursuits.

The ‘need’ is due to the rapidly increase in commercial traffic via the Arctic during recent years.

@ Bruce Cobb, there are three melting seasons left to see how accurately (or not) Wadhams called it. And even if he and Wieslaw Maslowski are off by a decade in their feedback-driven estimates of ice-free summer conditions they’d still be far closer than the majority of conservative modelers.

John – It also appears as if WUWT isn’t too keen on presenting its readers with evidence that supports the US Navy’s outlook:

There are few if ANY bureaucratic institutions LESS beholden to political pressure than the senior military. They will do whatever is necessary to follow their political leaders, and they have actively SWORN oaths to follow those political leaders to the literal death – if need be – to follow those political leaders.

Now, one “could” be so blinded by their CAGW religion to pretend that the United States ‘ actual “military leadership” would be doing everything required to protect lives and prudently and practically be preparing for an actual war in the future with real enemies that will actually kill their own troops and sink their own ships and destroy their own aircraft. And, in truth, there are almost certainly a few of those such real military leaders left somewhere in the military bureaucracy.

They are NOT the ones getting promoted under the Obama administration. They ARE the ones getting fired. The ones getting ignored. The ones getting shot actually troops in Afghanistan under Rules of Engagement that are DESIGNED to ensure American troops get shot and killed, and DESIGNED to ensure that the Afghan shooters are – bluntly – given legal advice and medical treatment after shooting American troops. And do your precious “military leaders” who fund such papers and documents protest such rules?

No.

So, under an administration where more Air Force money is spent/wasted on “ecological” fuels than ANY other institution worldwide, does the fact that you can cite a paper claiming the Arctic “might” be ice-free in a few years matter? under an administration that sends its US military Academy “leaders” to a government-MANDATED field to New Jersey NOT to study the Revolutionary battlefields and MILITARY logistics and problems of figthing a “real war”? So, what did this propaganda-obsessed administration send its future military leaders to New jersey to do?

Go to tour Egyptian relics, Chinese temples, Buddhist temples, Muslim mosques, and Indian temples. (No Christian churches or Catholic sites of course. – THOSE would imply some kind of “link” between church and the state! )

And, why did this administration force these cadets to go to Muslim mosques? So they can “understand” the people who are shooting them with AK-47’s and RPG’s.

No.

And, if the Arctic does become ice free, show me WHY IT MATTERS. Over the entire 24 hour day every day of the year from the end of August through the beginning of April, the Arctic LOSES more heat energy when it is ice-free than if it were ice-covered.

So, less Arctic ice between September and April, the more the planet cools.
The more Antarctic sea ice extents ANY TIME of year, the more teh planet cools.

And, by the way, the EXCESS Antarctic sea ice extents today? That “little bit” of EXCESS antarctic sea ice extents you are ignoring and trying to get us to ignore with your government-paid “military expertise” propaganda?

It is “only” 1/3 the size of Greenland.

By the way, who is paying you to spread the propaganda responsible for the immediate deaths of millions each year?

John says:
April 5, 2014 at 8:44 am
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A large part of that loss was wind driven sea ice being pushed south into the Atlantic.The other source of the melt is from the warmer Atlantic waters feeding into the eastern Arctic.

What has any of that got to do with whether the NSIDC are correct when they state that “Air temperatures however remained unusually high throughout the Arctic during the second half of March” and “a large area of the multiyear ice has drifted to the southern Beaufort Sea and East Siberian Sea, where warm conditions are likely to exist later in the year.”, or whether Caleb is correct when he states that “I think we need to pay less attention to 2 meter surface temperatures”, or whether the US Navy are correct when they state that “as multi-year sea ice in the Arctic Ocean recedes, previously unreachable areas may open for maritime use for a few weeks each year”?

What has any of that got to do with WUWT moderation policy for that matter?

Well, when you’re painfully ignorant, but trying to push a particular Weltanshauung, you might post as a Disney character promoting a weblog by asking stupid questions on more popular weblogs. Maybe that’s the answer.